Recent work on measuring growth with categorical outcome variables has combined the item response theory (IRT) measurement model with the latent growth curve (LGC) model (e.g., McArdle, 1988) and extended the assessment of growth to multidimensional IRT models (e.g., Hsieh, von Eye, & Maier, 2010; Huang, 2013) and higher-order IRT models…

In the field of social sciences, certain tasks, such as the identification of typologies and the characterization of groups of individuals according to a set of questions, tend to pose a challenge for researchers. Further complications arise if the chosen rating scale is from 0 to 10, since the responses can be treated either as metric or…

This study provides a comparison of the results of latent class analysis (LCA) and mixture Rasch model (MRM) analysis using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study -- 2011 (TIMSS-2011) with a focus on the 8th-grade mathematics section. The research study focuses on the comparison of LCA and MRM to determine if results…

Since the publishing of Nolan and Temple Lang's "Computing in the Statistics Curriculum" in 2010, the American Statistical Association issued new recommendations in the revised GAISE college report. To reflect modern practice and technologies, they emphasize giving students experience with multivariable thinking. Students develop…

The study aims at investigating students' learning/defence profiles. It also explores students' profiles during different years of study. Participants comprised of 425 undergraduates. They completed the 'Approaches to Study and Skills Inventory' and the 'Defense Style Questionnaire'. The students' academic achievement was measured through grade…

How data are collected and how they are analyzed is typically described in the literature, but how the data are encoded is often not described in detail. In this paper, we discuss how data typically gathered in PER are encoded and how the choice of encoding plays a role in data analysis. We describe the kinds of data that are found when using…

This paper performs multivariate analysis of skill differences in four Nordic countries as assessed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey of adults aged 16-65. The differences in average skills between Finland and each of the three Scandinavian…

Large-scale surveys such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) use advanced statistical models to estimate scores of latent traits from multiple observed responses. The comparison of such…

This study aims to reveal the main trends and findings of the studies examining the use of learning analytics in distance education. For this purpose, journal articles indexed in the SSCI index in the Web of Science database were reviewed, and a total of 400 journal articles were analysed within the scope of this study. The systematic review…

Multivariate techniques are increasingly popular as researchers attempt to accurately model a complex world. MANOVA is a multivariate technique used to investigate the dimensions along which groups differ, and how these dimensions may be used to predict group membership. A concern in a MANOVA analysis is to determine if a smaller subset of…

This paper investigates the viewpoints and perspectives of 179 undergraduate students engaged in a co-creation project regarding their anticipated progress, exploring, simultaneously, the affecting factors. The students attended the physics course in the Department of Industrial Design and Production Engineering at the University of West Attica,…

Purpose: Identifying appropriate targets for vocabulary instruction and determining the optimal sequence for instruction continue to be a challenge. The purpose of this study is to investigate how previously studied lexical characteristics collectively influence children's word learning. Method: A secondary data analysis was conducted using the…

We used data simulations to test whether composites consisting of cohesive subtest scores are more accurate than composites consisting of divergent subtest scores. We demonstrate that when multivariate normality holds, divergent and cohesive scores are equally accurate. Furthermore, excluding divergent scores results in biased estimates of…

A common approach to assessing one facet of civic engagement (CE) is through administering the Cooperative Institutional Research Program's (CIRP) social agency scale, which captures the extent to which respondents feel personally responsible to be involved in addressing various social and political issues. To summarize the scale's results in a…

Alcohol consumption is the number one public health concern in the university student population. The heterogeneous nature of university students' consumption has recently been highlighted. Thus, the aim of the current research was to use latent class analysis to employ a person centred approach to describe alcohol consumption among university…